Genesis 8:8-18

8 Then he sent a dove to check on the flood conditions,
9 but it couldn't even find a place to perch - water still covered the Earth. Noah reached out and caught it, brought it back into the ship.
10 He waited seven more days and sent out the dove again.
11 It came back in the evening with a freshly picked olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the flood was about finished.
12 He waited another seven days and sent the dove out a third time. This time it didn't come back.
13 In the six-hundred-first year of Noah's life, on the first day of the first month, the flood had dried up. Noah opened the hatch of the ship and saw dry ground.
14 By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the Earth was completely dry.
15 God spoke to Noah:
16 "Leave the ship, you and your wife and your sons and your sons' wives.
17 And take all the animals with you, the whole menagerie of birds and mammals and crawling creatures, all that brimming prodigality of life, so they can reproduce and flourish on the Earth."
18 Noah disembarked with his sons and wife and his sons' wives.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.